Prince Charming and the Porcelain Princess
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: True love had to be two-sided – otherwise it was just an unhealthy obsession. He was quite ready to be obsessed and she was equally ready to just let him be obsessed with her. Rarest of rare pairings, Rufus Scrimgeour and Dorea Black Potter. Long. FIN


****

A/N: The parts in italics in this story are from various sources.

_His Princess – Revealed: The True Story behind Rufus Scrimgeour and Dorea Black! Just why is Scrimgeour so 'fond' of James Potter?_

_There was a black-and-white picture beneath the headline, a picture Rose had seen in the family albums. A lovely woman in her mid-twenties, looking very mod in a flouncy skirt that must have been quite chic in the 40s, sat on a park bench, laughing. There was a tall, vaguely leonine, young man sitting next to her, his arms wrapped around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder, a twinkle in his eyes though he remained unsmiling._

**Shadowlit Façades **

_1942…_

Slender, petite and wide-eyed Dorea Black looked almost improbably young – _childish _even, one might say. Indeed, as she stepped into the smoky Locke, Stock and Barrel's Café that crisp autumn afternoon, she was almost comical, in her well-tailored, form-fitting dark robes. Like a little girl masquerading in her big sister's office clothes.

The first thing Rufus Scrimgeour thought as he leaned back into his chair, rings of smoke blowing from the end of his pipe – no cigarettes for Mr-Trying-to-Make-an-Impression, thank you – was, _Shouldn't she be at school? _She looked about fifteen, sixteen at most, almost seraphically innocent with her hair down to her shoulders, the loose black ringlets curling around her delicate little face.

She looked at him for a moment, recognition flashing across her face – leaving him to wonder vaguely where he'd seen her. And then, most suddenly, she cried, the barest tinge of French coloring her posh accent, "Why, Mr Scrimgeour! Well how do you do?"

It was only when she spoke – startling him out of his reverie with the use of 'Mr' and almost making him laugh because Mr Scrimgeour sounded so funny, made him feel so very old and experienced – that he remembered who she was. The little porcelain princess who used to hang off Madam Bow-to-Me Druella Rosier's arm like a worshipful puppy and who, by some odd arrangement, was aunt to the Black boys – eccentric Alphard and haughty Cygnus, though she was practically the same age as them. Her only defining characteristic, if he could recall clearly, was her surname. Just another Slytherin, just another narrow-minded, born-in-purple, self-obsessed bigot.

"Mrs-" he began courteously, scrounging for her surname. He was quite sure she was married by now – what else was left for a twenty-two-year-old pureblood girl, raised as she had been, in life?

"Oh no, I'm still Miss Black," she said brightly, taking a seat – uninvited – at his table. "Dorea – Dory, _actually_." And then anxiously, the porcelain-princessy manners he'd found so hypocritical (well they had been in Druella Rosier who never forgot her honeyed barbs while hexing you into bloody pulp) at Hogwarts, taking over, "I hope I'm not interrupting?"

The Gryffindor, the Muggleborn who'd suffered so much at the hands of her blood kin, roared in him, to tell her – Miss Dory-whatever-your-name-is-I'm-not-interested-_actually_ – that yes, she was interrupting and he'd much prefer if she'd removed her dolled-up arse from the chair. But then he looked down into her bright blue-grey eyes – eyes the color he'd learnt instinctively to associate with inbreeding, just because the color was so common in purebloods – and suddenly forgot everything.

"What brings you here to the domicile of the threadbare?" he asked instead, setting down his pipe. He refused to call her Dorea – it was too familiar, too much like they were friends or even on friendly terms when they most certainly _weren't _– or Miss Black – suddenly he wanted to pretend that the pretty girl in front of him wasn't the porcelain princess with all the porcelain-princessy bigotry he'd associated with her kind at school.

"Oh I'm rebelling," she said with engaging frankness. "I have a job at the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures, a _Muggle_ flat – top that – and this," she patted the slim silver watch that hung off her wrist, "is Rodriguez. Muggles have all sorts of silly names for their little vehicles – hideous names like Ford – so I decided to name my watch too, can you believe it's of Muggle manufacture? Quite lovely no?"

_You named your watch __Rodriguez? _Rufus was torn between disapproval at this fresh eccentricity and a sudden urge to laugh. She really was a ridiculous little girl – little girl, the words would persist for all that she was only two years younger than him, a grown woman in her own right.

If it had been any other pretty girl, any girl who hadn't looked so strikingly like some woodland fairy with those big, bright eyes, who hadn't been so decidedly insane he would have trusted his charms and kissed her hand while conjuring a rose for her. Tall, athletic, vaguely leonine and with those soulful, enigmatic dark eyes he liked to play Prince Charming and he was good at it too. But she wasn't just any other girl and so he could only nod weakly. She took that as her cue to plunge gallantly into a conversation.

He let her chatter on brightly while he ordered food – scrounging in his pocket for the extra money because he knew she wouldn't pay, she didn't seem the type to. For one so slim she had quite a healthy appetite, eating even more than him – this trait of voracious overeating was one she'd pass down many years later to her son.

Later, he was quite sure he'd been a dull companion throughout the afternoon – his only contributions to the conversation (monologue more like it) being acquiescent nods and a few scattered monosyllables. He was content simply to watch the way evanescent expressions flitted over her animated face, the way she moved her graceful, long-fingered hands, and to listen to her soft voice, rising and falling so dramatically.

Years later when he looked down at her tranquil face on the other side of the glass of her coffin. It was beautiful and youthful, even in her fifties and it came to him quite suddenly then that she had the sweetest voice of any woman he'd ever listened to. There was a melody, a lilting rhythm in her voice, beguilingly, elusively lovely yet homely, comfortable at the same time that he'd never heard in any other woman's voice.

When the meal was over and the bill was on their shabby little table it was he who first, resignedly thinking that nothing, not even lunch with a pretty girl was free, drew out his dragonhide wallet (the only unconventional item, smacking of rebellion, that he allowed himself to indulge in), ready to pay for them both. Because he played Prince Charming so well for them, women – even the independent, hardcore feminists – were quite ready to let him woo them with the clichéd (but effectively romantic, because what girl didn't want to be swept off her feet by the fairytale prince she'd dreamed of when she was a child?) routine of chocolates, flowers, opening doors and paying bills.

But it was she who – after the initial squeal, "How avant-garde! _J'aime le dragonhide_" – withdrew her (hideous) rhinestone-studded purse and said very sweetly but very firmly, "No thank you. I'm tired of having people pay for me."

_This is my life  
It's not what it was before  
All these feelings I've shared  
And these dreams  
That I'd never lived before_

**000**

_God sent us here to make mistakes_

_To miss the path, to go astray,_

_To wander blindly in the night_

_But searching, praying for the light, _

_Until at last we find the way._

If anyone had asked him to describe his relationship with her, he would have promptly replied, "Love at first sight." He would have conveniently kept quiet about the part _after _that, because it would have taken far too long to explain and what was worse, would degrade, demean whatever they'd had between them. Love at first sight was a beautiful notion, ideal for gallant Prince Charmings and sheltered Porcelain Princesses in fairytales. Sometimes he wondered why he could never classify his romance – he liked to call it romance, to simplify matters, though at best it had certainly been very one-sided – like that.

They fit into their parts neatly – the young, ambitious Auror determined to make his presence felt in the Ministry, the starry-eyed, lovely and loveable young woman who'd severed all ties with her autocratic family. But real life wasn't nearly as simple as that and if you looked behind the surface, both their façades fell pitifully apart.

The Auror wasn't quite as incorruptible as he should have been – avarice, covetousness and a savage temper were traits that he would have to struggle to control all throughout his life. You couldn't have such a charcoal-grey Prince Charming could you? Instead of being proud of his Muggle heritage, of his hard-working parents who'd striven all their life to keep enough food on the table for their twelve children, he was ashamed. He chose robes over the informal, Muggle-inspired trousers that were soon all the rage Post-War, pipes over cigarettes and Bathilda Bagshot's dull tomes to Walter Scott's novels which he'd once loved. He would have given anything to be Dorea, to be able to boast – though she never did and always looked slightly embarrassed when anyone commented about her surname – about a long line of proud, outstanding wizarding blood.

So after the love-at-first-sight part – the nice, presentable-to-the-public rigmarole he rehearsed should her name ever crop up in connection to his in the tabloids, _She was the loveliest woman I'd ever seen, I lost my heart to her that day in Locke, Stock and Barrel's Café _– came the other part.

The part about envy – tossing and turning in bed, wondering why she was so lucky, she didn't deserve what she had, so blasé about her career. Then guilt that gnawed at his entrails whenever she smiled at him, because she was so beautiful, so sweet that she clearly _deserved _everything she got and he most certainly didn't, he was such a monster for being jealous of her. Enchantment as she wove her web about him – he was just waiting to be snared and she had no clue, she was so used to making lapdogs out of men, she'd been so well-trained, of what she was doing to him. Jealousy, a mad urge to possess her completely as he realized that _he _wasn't the only man she smiled at. Fury that he realized was futile, that he was ashamed of when he understood – or when she made him understand, yelling at him for the first and last time in her life, "I most certainly am not fettered to you, _Mr_ Scrimgeour!" – that he could do nothing to stop her from smiling at other people in that special way.

And the worst part about it all, the part that made it quite impossible for him to stop loving her (she was a challenge, an unattainable one, but all the same he couldn't just let a challenge go away just like _that_, it wasn't in his keenly competitive nature) was that he knew she'd never love him. That was just her way – Dorea liked everyone and loved no one.

_O my lord, O Love, I have laid my life at thy feet; _

_Have thy will thereof, _

_Do as it please thee with it, _

_For what shall please thee is sweet._

True love had to be two-sided – otherwise it was just an unhealthy obsession. Rufus was quite ready to be obsessed and Dorea was equally ready to just _let_ him be obsessed with her. He could perish in his wild passion and she wouldn't so much as raise a finger to save him.

So that was the Porcelain Princess façade shattered too. Selfish, so unbelievably selfish that you'd never believe it just looking at her sweet, innocent, wide-eyed face, ready to turn his world topsy-turvy because it amused her, to tear him apart from the inside when she was bored. There was a streak of sadism running through all the Blacks and Dorea was certainly no exception. Emotional blackmail was her weapon of choice and she thought nothing of taking a kitchen knife and stabbing her breast to drive home a point – _The next time it'll be in my heart. You don't want that do you? Then be careful next time. _

No she would never love him – though she liked him intensely – and perhaps it was better that way, he'd think later. Love was too exacting and there was nothing that Dorea hated so much as a challenge.

_But the grace I have long time sought _

_Comes never in sight, _

_If in her it abideth not,_

**000**

_Opposites are not contradictory but complementary._

Are they?

She moved in with him before they'd known eachother more than six months, out of her shabby Muggle flat into the picturesque little cottage he'd bought on the outskirts of London. "I suppose this is just another occasion of rebelliousness?" he'd asked dryly, imagining the dismay of her family – he could practically picture the letters she'd receive, _A Mudblood! Dorea how _could_ you?_ – and she'd laughed. She didn't care enough for him to hide the fact that it was just another case of frustration with her straitlaced family, just another way to say, 'Look at me, O Insufferable Family, I'm totally hardcore!'

His family didn't even know – and wouldn't care if they did – about her or her family.

What did they have in common? Nothing aside from a world that thought them simply perfect – Prince Charming and the Porcelain Princess.

He believed in practical subjects with real-world applications, subjects which relied on logic, which you could always count on to follow specified rules – physics, Arithmancy, Latin.

She believed in Divination with all her heart, passionately defending it against his perfectly logical speeches about how wooly it was, and defiantly filled the house with crystal balls, heavy books on dream-divining, centaur lore and scrying bowls. Every other evening he'd enter the house filled with smoke – "Capnomancy, dearie, Merlin don't tell me you don't know what capnomancy is Rufus!" – or the furniture rearranged – "It simply isn't good luck to have the bed in the northeast corner" "And its good luck to have it in the loo is it?" "Er…" – or noxious fumes – "Essence of congealed Peryton blood, it heightens spiritual awareness…"

After a while he simply gave up protesting. It was much easier to let her do as she pleased – and he rather liked the picture she made, wrapped up in gauzy shawls and glittering beads, when she stared in the crystal ball, her voice floating over occasionally to him to divulge such tidbits of wisdom as "You mustn't have beef tomorrow, don't ask me why, the omens say so". It was she who would decide when he'd worked enough for a night – "Strictly speaking your job does not require you to memorize the role of Machiavellian theories in modern wizarding politics. Don't worry, you're too brilliant to not be promoted soon" –, who'd drag him outside and make love to him on the lawn, under a canopy of stars.

He walked briskly; always careful to keep his shoulders back, his head high, his footsteps measured and light. She glided languorously, not caring who was in her path – and if a crash there must be, then so be it, _she_ was a Black and most certainly would not divert her course just because there was another person in her way.

He rarely smiled but there was always a twinkle, lurking deep within the dark eyes that girls called 'soulful'. There was always a laugh on her pretty red lips but her eyes were always, well not cold exactly, but indifferent, far-away.

She sang like a bird – a mockingbird not a nightingale, because nightingales were just too ugly –, never caring about who was listening or whether her voice was cracked. She was completely devoid of self-consciousness about her voice while he was always worried about how his sounded. Was it serious enough? Civil enough? Pleasant to listen to, or tediously dull?

He tried to distance himself from anything smacking, even vaguely, of Muggleishness, from anything that would remind him of the heritage he regarded as a burden. She reveled in it, generously endowing her extensive wardrobe – "You really ought to have taken a job at Twillfit and Tattings', you know, as a fashion designer" "Too much effort, darling, you know how lazy I am" – with Muggle skirts and her albums with photographs shot with Muggle cameras. "A garden is like a child, nurtured by love and attention," she was fond of saying and – to his horror – would cheerfully take on the business of sowing, manuring, watering, pruning, fumigating by herself, blithely refusing help.

"When you have a green thumb," she also said, squinting in the warm spring sunlight, sweat trickling down her face, her unruly curls wrapped up in a tight yellow bandana, "You don't need a magic wand." He pretended that he didn't understand, because it was just too fun ragging her about her pro-Muggle tendencies.

She never slept with anyone else while they lived together – it was mainly due to sheer laziness (and she was frightfully lazy) on her part, there was too much effort involved in seducing someone else – but she never really loved him either. He loved her madly, but that didn't mean that he didn't notice that there were other women who were interested in him.

He wondered how she'd take the news when he told her, seven years after their first meeting, that he was marrying Elinor Belby. If she'd only said the word – or even if her face, always so expressive, had betrayed her – he would have tossed the ring Elinor had given him into the Thames and never thought about it anymore. But she'd just leaned over and kissed his cheek in the way a sister might, whispering, "Good for you."

The next morning there was a note on the kitchen table – _It would look awkward if we went on together like this, now that you're engaged _– and nothing inside to remind him of her presence. The walls were bare again, stripped of the detailed pictures of magical creatures she'd drawn or taken photographs of, the bookshelves empty of her fat books and not a shred of lace or silk remained in the wardrobe. Only her roses, climbing up the walls, blossoming in the vases, dewy in the dawn air outside in the garden, red, white, pink, were still there.

_Empty spaces fill me up with holes  
Distant faces with no place left to go_

**000**

_1953…_

_She is too fair for any man_

_To see or hold his heart's delight,_

_Fairer than Queen or courtesan_

_Or moonlit water in the night._

She was there at the wedding, looking not a day older than twenty – though in reality she was thirty-three – in her figure-hugging, jade satin evening robes. The creamy sheen of the pearls _he'd _given her on her thirtieth birthday on her collarbones and the white roses woven into the dark, glossy masses of hair took away the stiffness, the chilliness from her ultra-fashionable outfit. "Ely, this is Dorea Black, one of my good friends," he'd been forced to introduce them, "Dory, you know my wife."

"A pleasure," Dorea had murmured, purposely accentuating the French tinge in her voice, her accent more snobbish than ever. She'd offered a frosty smile to Elinor, Elinor who looked so plain and dowdy next to her. "Rufus and I," she'd added, for good measure, wrapping her arms around his shoulder, laughing lightly, "Are more than just good friends. Why he gave me these pearls for my last birthday. You're very lucky, Elinor – make sure you're able to keep him. A dance, sweetheart – for old time's sake?"

"Rufus is tired," Elinor said tightly, tugging at his arm, a scowl marring her prettily-made-up face. "Aren't you?"

He'd ignored her and taken Dorea's hand, her graceful white hand, murmuring, "How can I refuse a friend?"

"You're a vindictive little bitch," he'd hissed into her ear as they whirled on the brightly-lit floor, delighted to find that she still cared, that she could get jealous; completely disregarding the fact that it was his wedding and that woman in the white dress was his wife. "Perfectly despicable conduct."

And she'd laughed, not troubling to hide the fact that she cared. He could feel her body behind the whispering satin of her gown, the jasmine-y scent of her hair rising up to him. Her eyes sparkled, steely-blue, in the candlelight, her white skin almost luminous. At that moment he knew that things between them would never change.

_O twining hands! _

_O delicate white body _

_Made for love and pain!_

**000**

_1956…_

_A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours. _

_Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,_

_Made my blood burn and swoon_

_Like a flame rained upon. _

_Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids' blue, _

_And her mouth's sad red heavy rose all through _

_Seemed sad with glad things gone._

"Say that again," he'd said, not daring to believe his ears. "You're marrying…"

"Charlus Potter, yes, you heard me correctly," she'd snapped, sipping her tea and glaring at him across his desk. It was a dazzling summer morning and she'd turned up – unexpectedly – in his office in a chic pink ensemble announcing that she was going wedding-robe-shopping and if he wanted to come he could, he had such good taste and things were always slow for the Aurors in the morning… "Really now Rufus, I hope you won't make a fuss. If I can recollect clearly, I was quite sensible when you decided you wanted to marry that little Belby girl, a couple of years ago."

"But-but," he'd protested, "Potter's so _old. _He's old enough to be your father, Dorea! And poor, did I mention poor? No? Well how do you think you'll be able to afford clothes like that if you marry him? He used to be the Professor of Ancient Runes – just think how dreary life will be for you. You can't be serious."

"Amazingly enough, sometimes I am." She'd smiled, a false smile that made her worn-out face seem even more tired than ever, her eyes like chips of ice, "He's a pureblood, my family approves – my income will be sufficient to maintain us both – and I think it's high time I get settled. I like babies."

"You always said you were terrified of dropping Mrs Black's little girls whenever you visited them," he couldn't help but add resentfully.

"Oh well Druella's babies were frightfully slippery, I'm not going to have slippery babies, no thank you. And should Fate decree that it turn out slippery, I'm not going to be the one holding it," she'd announced loftily, "Charlus will – he worships me, did I mention that? Well, yes, I am quite worshipeable, so it's no wonder I suppose. But I think babies are awfully sweet and I'd rather like to have one of my own. Won't it be fun, driving one around in a pram? And oh the fun of shopping for a whole new maternity wardrobe!"

He'd looked at her aghast before announcing calmly, like a five-year-old, "I hate you."

She patted his arm sympathetically.

"But why must you marry at all?" he'd demanded angrily, words he'd kept to himself for years spilling out venomously now, "And if you had to, why not me? We had something going between us, goddamnit, Black!"

She'd patted her hair, glancing at it to make sure it was perfect in her little mirror before saying coolly, "You never did get around to formally proposing, Scrimgeour. And you know perfectly well that I could never have accepted you."

"So there's a difference between the bloke you'll take home to your parents and the bloke you'll shag every night for the last fucking fifteen years?" he'd hissed, forcing himself to grip the sharp glass edge of the table, to keep himself from reaching over and wrapping his fingers around her little white throat, tightly, so tightly until he could hear her choking, spluttering for mercy. _Goddamn elitist bitch_. "It's because I'm a Mudblood, isn't it? Christ, I thought you were different Dorea, I thought things like that didn't matter to you."

She'd stood up, a frustrated, bayed-in look on her face. "I'm very sorry if I've hurt you," she said, sounding not in the least apologetic, just tired and a little irritated. "But Rufus you must know – I'll always be a Black." And then she was gone, and the only thing left for him to do was plan a very long sabbatical far away from England.

_And so we go  
On with our lives  
We know the truth  
But prefer lies  
Lies are simple  
Simple is bliss  
Why go against tradition when we can  
Admit defeat?  
_

**000**

_1960…_

_Can ye beat off one wave with __prayer?_

_Can ye move mountains? Bid the flower_

_Take flight and turn to a bird in the air?_

_Can ye hold fast for shine or shower?_

_One wingless hour?_

_Ah sweet, and we too, can we bring_

_One sigh back, bid one smile revive?_

The next time he saw her, four years later, was on the cobblestone streets of Diagon Alley on a warm midsummer afternoon. She'd aged rapidly in the last few years, plumper and more rosily pretty than ever, the cheerful smile she'd worn in her girlhood – but which had begun to fade as she'd grown older – back on. She was pushing a little blue pram, chattering animatedly to her best friend, Druella Black. Druella's little girls – the oldest darkly beautiful in the Black fashion, the youngest as fair and graceful as her mother and the middle one, her hair as brown as a maple leaf in autumn, strikingly similar to Dorea in face – skipped in front of them.

Things had changed in four years, he'd lost a wife and she'd gained a son. "Mrs Potter," he'd made himself say courteously, ignoring Mrs Black's rapidly narrowing eyes, "A pleasure."

She'd smiled and given him her hand, Charlus Potter's sapphire ring catching the sunlight and winking at him. "There's someone I'd like you to meet, Mr Scrimgeour," she'd said formally, for the sake of the little girls who were eying her curiously – sensing perhaps the pulsating tension between them – "This is my little gem – James Ethelred Potter. He goes by Jem now."

"Quite a formidable name," he'd smiled, peeking down at the big eyes in the little face that stared up so innocently at him. They were hazel like Charlus's, but the shape and the long, beautiful eyelashes – eyelashes that he knew instinctively boys would later tease James for, they were so ridiculously feminine – were Dorea's. "How old is he?"

"Five months – quite a miracle the Healers said," she'd added quickly, referring to the age of the father.

"He looks like his father," Rufus had said, wishing wildly for a moment that the baby boy in the pram was his.

"Aunt Dorea," the oldest girl said suddenly, judging it an opportune moment to ask for long-withheld favors. "Can we go to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor? Mother?"

"Yes, I suppose we'd better all go," Mrs Black had said vaguely. She disapproved in general of ice-creams at odd hours, but in this case she was just looking for an excuse to scamper away. Like a rabbit to its hiddy-hole. "Meda, Cissy, come along now – Dory…"

"Oh yes, I'll be right along," she'd said, obviously flustered. "Beautiful aren't they?" she'd added fondly, watching the three girls skipping along the path, arm-in-arm. "I'd hoped so for a little girl – I'd have named her Vulpencula Hippolyta, such a meaningful, traditional, singularly elegant name…" She was quite serious – after all would not her grandson, in all seriousness in the distant future, name his favorite son 'Albus Severus'? "You've grown so thin… so er, how were your travels? France? Japan? Mesopotamia? Oh, I'm so sorry that was quite thoughtless of me – I read about Elinor's er, death in the newspapers – simply horrible. You must have been heartbroken."

"She was a wonderful woman – in her way," he'd said quietly, because she was – had been – and he'd never realized it more than he had when he looked down, for the last time, at her ravaged face, mutilated by the attack of the Perytons so much as to be almost unrecognizable. "If you don't mind I'd rather not…"

"Oh yes, how tactless of me." Reddening she'd bent over the pram, to stroke James' hair. "Four years is such a long time… we have some much to catch up on, you and I."

He'd looked at her, at the sunshine glistening off her smooth black hair and the glittering ring on her long fingers. At the baby with the hazel eyes and at her sweet, slightly abashed but still happy – happy to see _him_, he realized suddenly – smile. It wasn't right of him, but he'd long since given up being right. Besides, had it been right of her – she who pretended to be such a dewy, starry-eyed innocent – to show up at his wedding as she had, so many years ago? "You remember the place we used to live at?" he'd asked. "Well I'll be home early tonight, that's a guarantee."

She'd opened her mouth to say something but then she'd rapidly closed it again. "Oh what the hell," she'd muttered, taking his hand and pressing it lightly. Aloud she'd said primly, because appearances had to be maintained, because appearances always had to be maintained, "It was lovely meeting you again, Mr Scrimgeour. I shall call on you soon."

_Lying asleep between the strokes of night _

_I saw my love lean over my sad bed,_

_Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,_

_Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,_

_Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,_

_But perfect-coloured without white or red._

**000**

_196__7…_

_God made a world out of his dreams,  
Of wondrous mountains, oceans and streams,  
Prairies and plains and wooded land,  
Then paused and thought,_

He is almost unbearably proud when Dorea waves the newspapers over his face – "He looks Honor in one eye and Death in the Other" "Scrimgeour's Gallant Skirmish with Death" "Gryffindor Through Thick and Thin" –, a smile lighting up her whole face. "You foolish, foolish man," she whispers, tenderly kissing his forehead, the only part of his face not swathed in bandages or sizzling with healing potions, "When will you Aurors learn that there's more to life than trying to get killed? You won't see us good little Slytherins ever making any such tête-à-têtes with the Reaper."

"Don't tell me I had you worried, Mrs Potter," he manages to chortle, "Such concern on the part of such a notoriously chaste lady as yourself… well I'm flattered beyond words."

"Oh you had me worried, you unmitigated rogue," she chuckles, "And you know what the worst part of it is?" She pauses dramatically before announcing, "Now you've inspired my son to follow in your footsteps – yes, its official now. James has decided that the dangers involved in working as a dragon-tamer pale in comparison to those as an Auror. He'll probably die before he's twenty-two carrying on like you – I hope you're quite happy now that you've well and thoroughly corrupted my only son." But she's laughing and he knows that she's proud of him and that's really all that matters.

_"I need someone to stand on top of the mountains  
To conquer the seas, explore the plains and  
Climb the trees, someone to start small and grow,  
Sturdy, strong like a tree." and so..._

_1969…_

He seldom drops by at Dorea's new house at Godric's Hallow – it makes him uncomfortable to sit in her drawing room drinking tea from her pretty porcelain cups (with the spray of roses, her favorite flowers, painted on the china). The enormity of what exactly he's doing with her, how very wrong it is really – even though it _seems_ so right when she arrives every other night – stares him mercilessly in the face as little old Charlus Potter, smiling with the blessed innocence of the ignorant, makes small talk about his new thesis on Ancient Runes in the Mesopotamian Civilization.

_I am not a man, _he is forced to admit to himself and that's what hurts, what humiliates him most of all. But he can't stop himself – they're too far in it together.

He tries to make amends to Charlus though, in the only way that seems right, through his son.

_He created boys, full of spirit and fun,  
To explore and conquer, to romp and run,  
With dirty faces, banged up chins  
With courageous hearts and boyish grins._

**000**

_1979__…_

"I hate children," she'd cried passionately, flinging herself on his sofa. "Especially little brats born in 1960 – the present generation simply has no concept of the word _restraint_!"

He'd offered her a cup of tea, unable to keep from laughing. "Well James is only doing in the open what you've been doing secretly. Personally I think it's very gallant of him – not many boys his age would marry their girlfriends just because they were pregnant."

"That trashy Mudblood whore!" Dorea had howled, burying her head in her arms, her long hair tumbling over her shoulders, down to her waist. "They really ought to teach those children about Contraceptive Charms! A mother at twenty – well, really it's perfectly disgusting! Halfblood grandchildren – oh I never imagined this for my only son!"

"Why don't you deliver your frank and unbiased opinion of his conduct? Your views about his fiancée's lineage?"

"It's not only that she's a Muggleborn," Dorea had moaned, "It's quite absurd of them to marry so young – and I don't like the look of his darling Lily at all, not one bit."

"Then why don't you _tell _him?"

And then she'd looked up at him finally, tears trickling down her cheeks. "They love eachother," she'd groaned, "I'm his mother – do you think I could ever stand in the way of his happiness?"

He'd once thought that she liked everyone and loved no one. Now he realized that he was wrong.

**000**

_May it be an evening star  
Shines down upon you  
May it be when darkness falls  
Your heart will be true_

_1980…_

The last time he saw her alive, on a bitterly cold night, January snow had glistened on her dark coat, the wind whipping at her robes, snowflakes swirling around her. There'd been a dreamy, far-off look in her eyes as she'd stood in the ankle-deep snow singing her last sweet song.

_"Let come what will, there is one thing worth, to have had fair love in the life upon earth, to have held love safe till the day grew night…" _

And then she'd smiled, seeming to wake up. "Goodbye," she'd cried, blowing him an air kiss. "I'll see you tomorrow!" Then she was gone and the next night, instead of her, a letter had arrived, requesting his attendance at the funeral of Mrs Dorea Potter nee Black.

It had passed like a dream – James Potter, anguish written over his face, welcoming him, his fiancée wan and heavily pregnant.

When he'd looked down at her face for the very last time, he forgot everything he'd hated about her. The snobbishness and the selfishness, the indolence (so alien to his own nature) and hypocrisy. All he could think of as he took that last look was that she had the voice of an angel, an indescribably beautiful angel and that his love for her, in some small way, had redeemed him of his own sins.

_Love is stronger than death even though it can't stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries it can't separate people from love. It can't take away our memories._


End file.
